By Cal
Link: https://www.rwcmd.ac.uk/events/yen
Available until: 10th March 2021
Content warning: Animal cruelty, sexual assault, homophobia, racism
Yen is a painful play which not everyone will like to watch. It’s also a brilliant play, which is performed by a really strong cast so it is definitely one to watch if you possibly can, but I do urge you to read the content warnings before making a decision. It really is a very good play, but it definitely won’t be for everyone.
Yen tells the story of a family and one outsider. Brothers Hench and Bobby were living with their Mother, but she’s moved in with her boyfriend, leaving the brothers to look after themselves. Neither attends school and Bobby has behavioural difficulties. They also have a dog and I was initially quite excited to find he was called Caliban. I misheard the name, but it definitely wasn’t their lack of literary knowledge that made me feel so concerned to realise he was actually called Taliban.
The Mother does visit occasionally. Usually, she’s drunk, hyperglycaemic or both. The brothers spend their days watching violent porn and playing video games (though let’s be fair, they might have been doing that even if they had a more conventional household). They’re struggling to clothe and feed themselves. But in many respects, they’re actually doing amazingly well. They’re keeping themselves alive. They take the Mother in and look after her when she needs them, despite her abusive behaviour towards Hench in particular.
Then they meet Jennifer. She’s concerned by the sound of Taliban’s barking and her concern doesn’t diminish when she discovers two teenagers living on their own. She does what she can to help them and it really seems as though she’s getting through to them.
The boys do terrible things and it is really difficult to watch this, but the play is so much more than one terrible shock after another. There’s humour, for example when Bobby totally embarrasses his big brother in front of Jennifer. There’s affection and warmth between the two brothers and they do their best to be kind to their Mother. There are some genuinely lovely scenes.
The characters probably are doing their best in impossible circumstances and the boys really do manage incredibly well, but the world is hopelessly against them. It’s tragic what happens, not just for the victims but for the characters who did have the potential to be something more. They try so hard to keep going, but they’re not going anywhere. Not really. They aren’t even staying in the same place. They’re being dragged slowly and inexorably into a downward spiral and not even Jennifer can get them out of it.
You might wonder where the social services are. Or the police. The people who should have realised neither boy is attending school; that Hench is struggling to give Bobby adequate care. Someone should have stepped in. But it doesn’t always work like that. I won’t go into details and I obviously was adopted and I found a home so I was much luckier than these boys, but it did take longer than it should have done. I don’t think I’d ever have done what Hench and Bobby did, but when you’re living on the edge, it messes with your mind and who knows what we might all be capable of if the world pushes us beyond a certain point? This is one reason why the play is so disturbing – it shows that being a nice person doesn’t always stop you from doing terrible things.
The playwright is Anna Jordan and she has written an astonishing play which is about so much more than shock value and breaking taboos. It’s about four human beings who try to get things right, but they don’t really know what ‘right’ is. Even Jennifer doesn’t really handle things in the best way - the act of interfering with her neighbours’ lives could have gone horribly wrong a lot sooner than it did. Anna does not in any way condone what happens in her play, but she writes every character with compassion, and the good qualities she gives them makes the play all the more tragic.
Director Zoe Waterman probably had no choice but to create a production which allows for social distancing, but she’s used that starting point to create something really special. Hannah Drumm’s set gives each character has their own square of stage and they almost never leave it. Hench and Bobby each have a bed; the Mother has an armchair which she sits on or passes out into and Jennifer has a bench at a lower level to the other parts of the stage. The actors speak some of their stage directions aloud to help us work out what they’re meant to be doing and this worked really well.
This is an intriguing staging of the play which would be relevant and striking whether there was a pandemic or not. It can be interpreted in different ways, no doubt including lots I haven’t thought of, but one possible interpretation that particularly stood out to be is the psychological isolation of the characters. They try to help each other, but they’re ultimately on their own.
I am guessing the cast are RWCMD students which probably explains why the cast all look about the same age, but any suspension of disbelief required isn’t something you have to worry about for long because the actors inhabit their characters so well.
Calum Ross is a heartbreakingly sweet Bobby. He has a mouth on him (as many boys his age do), but he is kind and affectionate and that makes the ending all the sadder. Patrick Quinn is a protective Hench who tries hard to be responsible, but he hasn’t been given a good example and eventually, it gets too much. Meg Lewis is a gentle, kind Jennifer who was so nearly everything they needed. Catrin Walker-Booth is an aggressive, abusive Mother who puts her own needs first, but she’s a victim too. Taliban is only heard and never seen, but he is as real as any of them.
Bobby, Hench and their Mother are a long way from being
perfect, but the actors’ performances, in combination with Anna Jordan’s
incredible writing, makes you care about each one of them. Even though you
really don’t want to.
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